UnBroken tells the story of the seven Weber children and what happened to the family both during and after the Holocaust. As of April 23, Netflix has licensed the title for streaming on its service, coinciding with the start of Yom HaShoah. UnBroken is available on DVD and otherwise available to buy or rent through digital retailers.

In UnBroken, Beth Lane takes on the heavy task of tracing her family’s footsteps as they hid and later made their way to the US. Her mother and her six siblings had to rely on the generosity of strangers in order to stay alive. The film held its festival premiere on October 8, 2023, one day after the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. I was initially planning to cover the film during DOC NYC in 2023 but my headspace and focus was something of a mess in the aftermath of October 7. I regret that I waited this long to watch and cover UnBroken–even amid the surge in antisemitism–but this film deserved my undivided attention.

The UnBroken story starts when Alexander and Lina Banda Weber were married on September 12, 1926–in an even smaller world, there’s a Jewish geneological connection, too, with an in-law relationship rather than direct blood relationship. Alexander converted in order to marry his wife. He was later arrested after the Nazis came to power, sent to Oranienburg in 1933, and would never again be the same. As for Lina, she was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. Before being sent to Auschwitz, Lina was doing whatever she could to save Jews or Roma. Their surviving children discuss their memories of when Lina was taken away.

All of the children were incarcerated shortly thereafter. Sometime after that, Alfons, Senta, Ruth, Gertrude, Renee, Judith, and Bela were somehow–against all odds–hid in Germany and were able to stay together at Arthur and Paula Schmidt’s farm in Worin, outside of Berlin. It’s only after their 1946 arrival to America in which everything started to fall apart–they got separated and wouldn’t see each other again for 40 years, reuniting in 1986. At some point, they returned to Berlin with their father, only to end up buried in the rubble when an Allied bomb dropped on their home.

Beth Lane travels to the farm, meeting with the present owners. What shocks me is how the Worin mayor, Rudy Fehrmann, knew of the Webers hiding on the farm and kept it a secret. A German politician keeping secrets from the Nazis is just unheard of! Anyway, Beth is ecstatic to meet with the mayor’s grandson, Rudolf Fehrmann III, while visiting the farm. He knew that his grandfather helped Jewish children and died in a penal camp in 1946. It’s one of those bittersweet moments.

The only way that the Weber family could safely emigrate from Germany was if they were declared orphans. Alexander was on board with this, knowing it would lead to his children having a better life in America. At one point, he renounced his Judaism and insisted on his children being baptized, if it would lead to a different fate. My understanding is that they are the only family of seven children that survived together and left Germany together, hence the UnBroken title. It’s a slightly different from what happened to the family in We Were the Lucky Ones. Their immediate family was split up by they all survived and reunited.

Upon immigrating, the Weber children were later broken up in Chicago. While still in Germany, Ruth had done her best in making sure that the siblings–ages 6-17 at the time–didn’t separate from each other. Bela was the only one formally adopted while her older siblings–who stayed in touch–were put into various foster homes by the Jewish Children’s Bureau. This proved tough for Bela, being the youngest of the family. I don’t know why better efforts weren’t made to keep them together. She would visit with siblings every now and then, but the acting out led social workers to advise against future visits.

Alfons had written a 40-page document, A Brief History of the Weber Siblings, ahead of the 50th anniversary reunion in 1996. Excerpts of this short memoir are weaved into the film’s narrative between interviews, photos, and other footage, including the 1986 reunion and Lane’s own journey in following her family’s footsteps. A more recent reunion follows–Beth puts the family tree together with post-it notes. They had 72 people in all–not everyone attended this reunion, of course.

As something of a footnote, a decade after his children immigrated, Alexander also immigrated to America with a new wife and two children. He had been denied entry in 1951. By the time he arrived in 1956, his children had moved on, starting families of their own. The Schmidts were named to Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations in 2015.

UnBroken tells the story of just one family–one that is worth watching. There are plenty of personal Holocaust stories that we don’t know about and I’m grateful to Holocaust survivors for opening up.

DIRECTOR: Beth Lane
SCREENWRITERS: Beth Lane & Aaron Soffin
FEATURING: Beth Lane, Phillip Boehm, Gertrude Chapman, Renee Dicker, Ruth Gilliana, Ginger Lane

Greenwich Entertainment released UnBroken in theaters on February 21, 2025. Grade: 4/5

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